2012 Pairsine Challenge: The ultimate food and wine throwdown
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| Kendra Anderson |
| Stunningly simple yet complex: roasted quince and parsnip soup topped with a crispy kale chip. |
Most Creative Chef Tom Coohill, Chef Dave Harker of Meritage (Honorable Mention) and Best Overall Chef Lon Symensma.
We swooned for Coohill's follow-up dish -- a kind of sous vide pheasant roulade, stuffed with black truffle mousse and resting atop a butternut squash and parsnip purée and drizzled with a berry gastrique. The key component on the plate that brought the wine pairing home was precisely that gastrique, which harmonized beautifully with the rich, extracted berry and spicy oak flavors present in the Peju Province Merlot 2009 ($35).
Most Creative Chef honors went to a relative newcomer on the Denver restaurant block: Tom Coohill, chef and owner of his namesake LoDo restaurant, Coohills. Coohill blew us away with two perfectly executed dishes. The first was a pistachio pesto-crusted jumbo diver scallop, accented by a precision-cut grapefruit suprème; the accompanying wine selection rocked, too -- the zesty 
Kendra Anderson Coohills' pistachio pesto-crusted sea scallop = perfection.
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